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Technological progress has put amazing tools in the hands of mankind. You can see the signs of progress everywhere: scientific advances have cured diseases, extended life spans and enabled instant worldwide communication. That’s all terrific, but because society generally misunderstands the fundamental nature of progress, people are not using all these advances in the best ways possible. People still assume that they get more out of doing more – and that’s the wrong approach.

In reality, if you want to be happier, find a way to get more by doing less. Specifically, examine your life until you identify the most valuable, productive and easiest 20% of your activities, the part that gives you the best return for your effort. This highly productive and pleasurable fraction exists in everyone’s life, in every area. However, the area of peak performance and pleasure is different for everyone, because everyone is unique. Your job, then, is to find that special area in your life.

Using the 80/20 principle to identify the best elements in your life – and the world – is not elitist. In fact, anyone can act on it, because it arises out of attributes that are common to everyone.

Most people assume they must work hard. But to apply the 80/20 principle, rather than work hard, you must think hard. Fundamentally change the way you think and resist the influence of society. Paradoxically, although the goal of applying the 80/20 principle is ease and pleasure, achieving this goal is not easy: you will probably find it harder to do less than to continue to work hard.

When you start to apply the 80/20 principle, you will quickly encounter three major pitfalls:

First, if you decide you will work only long enough to get all that you want, you’ll never finish. Human desire is infinite.

Second, if you’re like most people, you compare yourselves to others. But if everyone is doing this, the competition is endless; every time someone else adds something, you must also. Even more importantly, the 80/20 principle requires you to discover and act upon your own unique desires and values, without getting distracted by others.

Third, like most people, you may feel that ambition and striving are good things in and of themselves. But ambition is good only when it is focused and enables you to extend yourself to reach your goals.

Step 1 – Find Your Passion

To live the 80/20 principle, you must take action. First, identify that small percentage of all the elements in your life that is the most important and profitable to you, the part you feel passionate about doing. Review your life methodically, examining all possible areas to find what excites you most. Then comes the tough part: making that the core of your life.

This exciting area should have another characteristic as well: it should be easy. The things that give you the most benefit will require the least effort. That’s how progress works, both on the species level and for individuals. If you think you’ve found the thing that really matters to you, but you’re gritting your teeth and forcing yourself to work at it every day, you haven’t found your core passion yet.

Step 2 – Subtract

Once you’ve identified your core passion, your second step is to recognize that most things have limited worth, and to subtract those elements of your life that don’t add value. The 80/20 principle does not require you to be good at everything. In fact, it requires you to recognize the opposite truth. Your gifts lie in specific areas. Focus on those, to the exclusion of everything else. As you do this, you’ll become more individual, more yourself. The 80/20 principle is one of elimination and subtraction – even of attractive ideas like “effective habits.” You don’t want to develop effective habits. You want to develop fewer habits. Your habits should be the particular ones that fit you best and enable you to reach your goals most pleasantly.

Step 3 – Living on “Happiness Island”

The next conceptually difficult step is to slow down and live in the moment. Once you identify those parts of your life that matter most, you’ll get the most out of them by lavishing plenty of time upon each one, not by rushing from one to the next. . Spend more time on your personal “happiness islands” – those areas of peak satisfaction that currently make up only a small fraction of your life. If you really practice the 80/20 principle, you can extend those periods until they fill more and more of your life.

Merely contemplating the 80/20 principle and the areas of your life that matter most is not enough. You must develop an action plan if you’re serious about living an 80/20 life. Clearly identify your goals and the route you’ll follow to reach them. Like the goals themselves, your route should be easier, more enjoyable and more profitable than any of the alternatives. Set aside time to work on your 80/20 plan. Carry a reminder of your plan with you so you can refer to it. And review it regularly to make sure that you are moving closer to your goals and that your path is an 80/20 path. Always ask yourself, “Can I find easier, pleasanter, richer ways to achieve my goals?”

Reaching your goals is not a matter of positive thinking. The 80/20 principle does not require you to deny negative emotions. Instead, learn to accept them as natural part of life. When you encounter negativity, shift your focus and act. When you take positive steps toward your goals, positive emotions will follow.

Start with Yourself

To apply the 80/20 principle to your life, focus on one area at a time, starting with the core: yourself. Be who you want to be, clearly and intensely. Ask the fundamental questions:

What do you care about most?

Who do you care about most?

Who do you want to be in the future?

What qualities do you most want to possess?

What qualities do you currently possess?

Answer these questions with complete honesty – do not give the answers that you think will gain other people’s approval or even the answers you’ve always given in the past. Then, commit completely, cutting away the inessential. Once you start, your subconscious mind will recognize your intense focus and will offer you new ideas that will enhance it.

As you follow the route to your goals, remember that the 80/20 principle is counterintuitive. Nowhere else in your life have you learned that you can reach your goals by the good, easy, pleasant route. You must wake up to your own vision to see these options. So ask yourself more questions: What would you usually do? What wouldn’t you do? Might that work? Can you make a familiar path easier? Can you follow it in ways that benefit you more?

Finding your true motivation, that thing that makes you jump out of bed each morning filled with excitement to conquer the day. This is what you need to have, or need to find in order for real change to happen.

Here is a great video from Daniel Pink talking about motivation. I’ve copied a quote from his talk that you can use to inspire your goal setting.

“The good news is that the scientists who’ve been studying motivation have given us this new approach. It’s built much more around intrinsic motivation. Around the desire to do things because they matter, because we like it, they’re interesting, or part of something important. And to my mind, that new operating system for our businesses revolves around three elements: autonomy, mastery and purpose. Autonomy: the urge to direct our own lives. Mastery: the desire to get better and better at something that matters. Purpose: the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves. These are the building blocks of an entirely new operating system for our businesses.”

How do you find your motivation? Challenge yourself with these 3 questions.

What deep desires do you have that drive you? How can they be turned into positive energy?

You can have anything in life but you can’t have everything. What is that one thing you wish to become a master at?

What’s yearning deep inside you that you want to leave as your legacy? What is it that you do in the service of something larger than yourself?

Abraham Lincoln once characterized the leader’s lonely job this way: “If the end brings me out all right, what’s said against me won’t amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.” Leadership is often treated as a mystical, inexplicable quality, like charisma or spirituality. But, what if leadership was actually a set of behaviors and attitudes that you can study and master?

The First Leadership Commitment
Seek challenging opportunities to grow, change, innovate and improve. This means treating every job like an adventure rather than a task. Think from the ground up; approach every assignment like a turnaround project. Constantly question the status quo, and never accept the answer, “Because that’s how we’ve always done it.” Don’t try to think up all the solutions – send your people out to shop for ideas. Make it everyone’s job to find better ways to operate. Add adventure to everyone’s work. Learn new skills to stimulate your creativity.

Inspire a Shared Vision
Leaders believe they can make extraordinary things happen. They can envision a bright future and can convince colleagues to support their visions. Leaders develop clear visions of where they want to go, and then construct events and systems to get there, because vision is the force that invents the future. While visions alone are insufficient – since leaders need constituents – people decide to follow leaders whose visions they share.

If you understand people, you can convince them to believe in your vision by breathing life into their hopes, dreams and aspirations. Leadership, in this sense, is a dialogue rather than a monologue. Once you understand your constituents, you can breathe life into their hopes and dreams and paint a picture of a brighter future for them, a future in which they have a prominent role. To have your vision accepted, you must communicate it enthusiastically. When leaders identify the innovations that give them the most pride, they name projects that they were the most enthusiastic about before the outcome could be known. Of course, challenging the status quo and being a visionary carries risk, so your risk tolerance matters.

The Second Leadership Commitment
Experiment, take risks and learn from your mistakes. A leader-visionary can test ideas by setting up small experiments, making it safe for others to try new ideas, too. Some of your bright ideas won’t work, but that’s fine as long as you learn from your mistakes. Most people, when confronted with change, immediately douse any enthusiasm for it. Don’t discard an idea that initially sounds strange. Instead, insist that your organization honor its risk takers. Study your failures as carefully as your successes, and encourage people to think of solutions, not obstacles.

The Third Leadership Commitment
envision a future that is more uplifting and ennobling. You can think about your past in specific ways to determine where you want to be in the future. Be specific; determine exactly what you want. Write a vision statement and dare to act on your intuition. Test your assumptions; become a futurist. Craft a vision that improves your co-workers’ lives and prepares your company’s future.

Enable Others to Act
Effective leaders, no matter how skilled or smart, know that even their best ideas will fall on barren soil without other people’s assistance. Effective leadership is always a team effort – a leader without a team is no leader. Exemplary leaders inspire a sense of organizational teamwork far beyond an inner cadre. People respond to leaders who enable them to act. Leaders understand that people cannot do their best work if they feel weak, insignificant or alienated from the process. Give them the sense of ownership they need.

“Love – of their products, their services, their constituents, their clients and customers, and their work – may be the best-kept leadership secret of all.”

The Fourth Leadership Commitment
Appeal to others people’s values, dreams and hopes to share your common vision. Learn the interests of the people you lead, and then present them with a vision that makes the intangible tangible. To do this effectively, you first must listen passionately to your people.

The Fifth Leadership Commitment
Foster collaboration by promoting cooperative goals and building trust. Think in terms of mutual goals, because no one ever accomplishes anything significant alone. Instead of saying, “Here’s what I want to do,” say, “Here’s what we need to do.” Encourage people to collaborate and exchange ideas.

“Flesh-and-blood leaders know that the more they control others, the less likely it is that people will excel. They also know that the more they control, the less they’ll be trusted. Leaders don’t command and control, they serve and support.”

Set an Example
It’s not enough to talk the talk – your followers will watch to see if you walk the walk as well. True respect is not earned with a title. Many leaders explain that they would never ask someone to do something they are not willing to do first. Leaders are leaders because they are willing to go first. Leaders are expected to set an example and stand up for their beliefs. Correspondingly, leaders need detailed operational plans. You can succeed as a leader by steering projects along a carefully planned course, measuring performance and providing feedback. If you know what the steps toward success are, you’ll have a better chance of arriving there.

The Sixth Leadership Commitment
Strengthen others, give away power, assign critical tasks and offer support. If you want your people to empower those who report to them, you’ll have to do the same thing. At Ritz-Carlton Hotels, associates who work the registration desk have the authority to sign off on as much as $2,000 without management approval. You should increase signature authority at all levels, reduce unneeded steps and procedures, and generally support the exercise of independent judgment. One of the great leadership skills is to make other people heroes.

The Seventh Leadership Commitment
Make your behavior consistent with shared values. Write your own leadership credo – what are the principles, beliefs and values that will guide your leadership style? Begin by knowing yourself, your strengths and the things that matter to you. Share your personal values. Take an action audit, evaluating what you do to ensure that your behavior is consistent with the beliefs you espouse.

“Leadership is certainly not conveyed in a gene, and it’s most definitely not a secret code that can’t be understood by ordinary people.”

The Eighth Leadership Commitment
Achieve small wins that promote consistent progress and build commitment. Progress is always incremental. To build your organization’s confidence and enthusiasm, recognize each small step along the way.

Encourage the Heart
People often get frustrated and exhausted during the climb toward excellence. Because this is an arduous process, naturally people may be tempted to give up along the way. It’s your job as leader to restore the heart of your organization and encourage your constituents to carry onward. Leaders rally the troops.

“Leadership is a reciprocal process between those who choose to lead and those who choose to follow.”

Sometimes you can achieve this through dramatic gestures: an all-hands meeting, a special theme or program, or effective use of symbolism. At other times, however, a simple action is enough to invest your organization with a new spirit. One plant manager used to dress up as a clown and give balloons to the employees.

Make no mistake though: encouraging the heart of your firm to help people persevere through difficult times is very serious business. The best-kept leadership secret may be love: love of product, love of service, love of customers and love of employees.

The Ninth Leadership Commitment
Recognize individual contributions that lead to the success of each project. Recognize people with rewards that have personal meaning to them. Creative awards encourage creative thinking.

“If there’s a clear and distinguishing feature about the process of leading, it’s in the distinction between mobilizing others to do and mobilizing others to want to do.”

The Tenth Leadership Commitment
Celebrate team achievements, not just individual ones. After all, you want your staffers to think as a team, so you must recognize and reward team accomplishments. Be a cheerleader, but in a way that feels comfortable to you. Celebrations help to acknowledge small wins on the larger road to victory.

Giving advice is easy but trying to solve everyone’s problems will hurt you and your business over the long term.

Becoming a strong leader means being able to help grow your employees into confident individuals. Developing a coaching habit will help you achieve that. If you adopt a solid coaching habit, it will sustain you as a leader and help you avoid three common workplace problems that often burden leaders:

“Creating overdependence” – Employees easily become dependent on leaders to do their work for them. This is a common problem for leaders who are always ready to step in and help. Coaching prompts employees to handle their responsibilities themselves.

“Getting overwhelmed” – As a busy leaders, you have a mountain of work every day. The last thing you need is employees who try to unload their work on you.

“Becoming disconnected” – When employees aren’t confident about their job abilities, they avoid challenging tasks and projects. Coaching enables employees to step up and ask for the toughest assignments.

Training yourself to ask people you’re coaching questions is an important new behavior you should develop as a habit. Use these questions with employees you supervise and with “customers, suppliers, colleagues, bosses, and even…spouses and teenage children.” These questions can transform your scheduled one-on-one sessions with employees, your business and team meetings, as well as reshaping unplanned conversations in the hallway.

Here are Seven Essential Questions to help you develop your coaching habit:

1. The “Kick-Start” Question
Ask, “What’s on your mind?” to initiate a focused conversation. This question directs the conversation to the most important issue, as defined by the other party. Asking it puts that person in charge of the direction of the conversation. This question makes it clear that you want to talk about your employee’s most pressing issue, not your own. After opening with this question, use the

“3P model” to focus the conversation. The three P’s are:

“Projects” – Determine what your employee is working on and discuss
current assignments.

“Patterns” – Exploring your employees’ habitual behaviors can reveal how you can help
them approach and accomplish their jobs more effectively.

2. The “AWE” Question
Ask, “And what else?” This is the single most effective coaching question. By asking it, you generate greater understanding, improved mindfulness and enhanced self-knowledge, which increase the potential for meaningful two-way communication. The AWE question grants you more time to shape the conversation in a productive way. It enables the employee to discuss candidly whatever is on his or her mind. The AWE question moves you away from turning into an “Advice Monster.” The following haiku explains effective coaching: “Tell less and ask more. / Your advice is not as good / As you think it is.” While this coaching philosophy makes sense, it’s not easy to implement. The AWE question helps you remember to listen before you speak.

3. The “Focus” Question
Ask, “What’s the real challenge here for you?” This question helps you uncover a deeper issue worth addressing, not “just the first problem” your staffer cited. Many leaders try to solve problems as soon as they arise. Instead, “tamp down the ‘Advice Monster’ and help people quickly figure out their own paths.” However, the way people first characterize a problem often has nothing do with the underlying issue. “Instead of moving into advice-giving, solution-providing mode,” ask the Focus question. Its phrasing conveys your understanding that the employee faces numerous challenges and that one of them matters more than the rest. The words “for you” personalize the issue and make the employee responsible for determining which concern is a priority

4. The “Foundation” Question
Ask, “What do you want?” Like the focus question, the foundation question – and its companion question, “But what do you really want?” – take you directly to the main challenge. Think of this as the “Goldfish Question,” because it can cause people to react by staring at you while their mouths open and close soundlessly. This question won’t be easy for employees to answer. The foundation question deals directly with the common illusion that those participating in a conversation know what everyone wants to achieve. You and your staffer must determine the need that underlies the want. For example, if a worker wants to leave early one day, try to ascertain why leaving early is important. “Recognizing the need gives you a better understanding of how you might best address the want.”

5. The “Lazy” Question
Ask, “How can I help?” This question saves a great deal of time. It cuts through all the hemming and hawing. It requires your employee to make a direct request of you concerning what matters most to him or her. The lazy question prevents you from immediately jumping into action and trying to solve a problem before you fully understand the situation. The wording of this question proves critical to its effectiveness. A blunter version is “What do you want from me?” If you decide to use the more direct version, preface it with “Out of curiosity…” You could also start with, “Just so I know…”, “To help me understand better…” or “To make sure that I’m clear…”

6. The “Strategic” Question
Ask, “If you’re saying yes to this, what are you saying no to?” This is a complex question. You’re asking the employee to commit to the previous yes. This precludes the popular excuse, “I never said I was going to do that.” The strategic question asks employees to examine the implications of their choices. It can also clarify the “boundaries and form” of the employee’s no. Here again, the 3P model of projects, people and patterns can be useful: What projects should you delay or stop working on? What connections with other people should you sever? What lapsed ambitions should you attempt to fulfill? “What habits do you need to break?”

7. The “Learning” Question
Ask, “What was most useful for you?” Along with the initial kick-start question, the learning question is a “Coaching Bookend.” This question guarantees that everyone will find these meetings and sessions meaningful. Asking this question enables the employee to achieve a valuable “learning moment.” It focuses the staffer to pause, think and pay attention to the most important new information that emerges from the conversation

Every time I read this story; I get inspired as it ignites my WHY. For me; my WHY is the belief in the power of peers and that by collaborating and supporting each other, we can accomplish more than trying to go at it alone.

I share with you the Goose Story by Dr. Harry Clarke Noyes in the hopes that it might also inspire you to collaborate, share with & learn from others with the goal of becoming a better leader.

Enjoy!!

The Goose Story
by Dr. Harry Clarke Noyes

Next
fall, when
you see Geese
heading South for
the Winter, flying along
in V formation, you might
consider what science has dis‐
covered as to why they fly that way:
as each bird flaps its wings, it creates an
uplift for the bird immediately following. By
flying in V formation the whole flock adds at least
71% greater flying range than if each bird flew on its own.

Key Takeaway: People who share a common direction and sense of community can get where they are going more quickly and easily because they are traveling on the thrust of one another.

When
a goose falls
out of formation,
it suddenly feels the drag
and resistance of trying to go it alone
and quickly gets back into formation to take
advantage of the lifting power of the bird in front.

Key Takeaway: If we have as much sense as a goose, we will stay in formation with those who are headed the same way we are.

When
the Head Goose
gets tired, it rotates back
in the wing and another goose flies point.

Key Takeaway: It is sensible to take turns doing demanding jobs.

Geese
honk from behind to
encourage those up front to keep up their speed.

Key Takeaway: As a leader, how are you communicating with; and encouraging your team?

Finally,
and this is important,
when a goose gets sick, or is
wounded by gunshots and falls out
of formation, two other geese fall out with that
goose and follow it down to lend help and protection.
They stay with the fallen goose until it is able to fly, or until
it dies. Only then do they launch out on their own, or with another formation
to catch up with their group

Key Takeaway: If we have the sense of a goose, we will stand by each other like that.

So today I want to talk to you about an exercise called Decision Tree from the book Fierce Conversations from Susan Scott.

Excellent exercise for organizations and leaders looking to:

Improve delegation

Engage employees

Create trust within the team

Accelerate execution of decision making

A lot of organizations and leaders try to improve these things. They talk about delegation they talk about empowerment within the organization with their employees but what they lack is the structure of what are those key decisions what are the decisions that everyone is allowed to make.

Questions employees ask themselves:

What am I allowed to decide without getting approval?

When can I bother my superior for advice?

What will happen if I make a mistake?

When should I consult the rest of my team?

Should I report back? and to whom?

These are all valid questions that without a clear direction to a team, can create confusion. Even if the intentions are there, execution will be lacking within the organization.

Decision Tree solves all of that by looking at your organization as a tree:

Leaf Decisions

Branch Decisions

Trunk Decisions

Root Decisions

Leaf Decisions

The leaf decision is empowering your key members of your staff to decide, execute and don’t have to report back to you or to anyone within the organization.

Branch Decisions

Empower your key employees to decide, execute and report back to you or their superior. So it’s not about consultation and just letting them know.

Trunk Decisions

The framework recommends to decide & consult first with the CEO or the key report. And then execute. So there is a consultation barrier and quality control before moving to the next level.

Root Decisions

In this case, the individual has the right to tap into all of the resources of the organization and call a team meeting for a brainstorm or some kind of operation together to come up with the best possible decision for the issue or opportunity that has been identified.

How to implement Decision Tree with your direct reports over the next 30 days:

Ask your direct reports to log all key decisions for 30 days.

Ask them to track the situation and process surrounding these decisions (e.g. how much time they deliberated, who did they consult, etc…)

At the end of 30 days, work together to categorize all of the decisions without the 4 types (Leaf, Branch, Trunk or Root)

As someone who strongly believes in the People, Product, Process methodology of business success. I’ve always been intrigued by McDonald’s ability to focus on every detail throughout the business and optimize every process.

This is not a blog post about their food; this is about the return on investment in regards to the money and time put into automating and optimizing every process in your business.

I recently watched The Founder which tells the story of McDonald’s and I loved the scene where they give the tour of the restaurant. Even in those early days, the entire leadership team was focused on process in order to increase speed while keeping quality control. This was part of the DNA from day one and key to their rapid growth as each new franchise owner was able to replicate success.

How to successfully think of process optimization

Make sure knowledge is not stuck in peoples heads.

Make process documentation a part of your culture and day to day workflow.

Reward your team when coming up with new ideas on how to innovate or optimize existing processes.

Stick to the process even during tough times or time crunches.

Resist the urge to go back to shooting from the hip during times of growth. Stick to the plan.

How are you exploring process optimization in your organization? I’d love to hear from you.